The caricature that opens this post pictures one of the “prominent men of Montana” whose career took him from laboring in the earth as a youthful miner to running a successful Butte liquor house and brewery and later heading up the fight against the forces of Prohibition in “The Bonanza State.” His name was Jeremiah “Jerry” Mullins.
Mullins was born in Quebec, Canada, in August 1838 of Irish immigrant parents. His father, Daniel Mullins from County Cork, immigrated to North America in 1846 at the outset of the Irish potato famine. After a period in Massachusetts, Daniel went to Canada to work on the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway. Jerry’s mother, Mary Mahoney, was born in Ireland and brought to Canada as a child. The parents married there. They would have nine children, of whom Jerry was the youngest.
By the time Jerry Mullins reached school age the family had relocated to Marquette County, Michigan, where he attended elementary school. His education ended when he was fourteen, forced by family circumstances to go to work. “He subsequently earned his first money by driving a horse, receiving a dollar a day wages,” according to a 1913 biography. “…His first permanent employment was as a day laborer on the Canadian Pacific Railroad.”
When he reached 21, Mullins, pulled by the lure of gold, left his Michigan home for the Black Hills of South Dakota. The greatest days in Black Hills mining history had come three years earlier in 1876, when a team of four men discovered a gold bearing outcropping near present day Lead, S.D., staked a lode claim, and named their new mine the Homestake. They had located a part of the most significant gold vein in American history. Thousands flocked to the area; many like Mullins were too late to experience a golden harvest. After laboring in the soil there for two years, in 1881 Mullins moved 520 miles west to Butte, Montana, and resumed his mining efforts.
Those activities may have been more fruitful. After five years in mining he found sufficient resources to open a saloon on the east side of Butte’s Main Street, shown here. This venture proved unsuccessful and after only a year Mullins abandoned the role of saloonkeeper and, as his biography put it: “The ensuing four years was variously employed….” Among occupations, he served two years as deputy sheriff of Silver Bow County. Even then Mullins’ talents were becoming increasing evident to himself and residents of Butte.
Thus, it probably surprised no one when John A. Stromberg who ran a store on the corner of Arizona and Platinum Streets featuring “whole fruits, produce, wines, liquor and cigars” took Mullins on as a partner. The new enterprise, Stromberg, Mullins Company ditched fruit and vegetables and became entirely a liquor house, also selling bar equipment and supplies, and boasting an adjacent saloon. Shown here as it looks today, the company’s chief location was known as the Stromberg-Mullins Building.
Artifacts from Stromberg, Mullins are rare. An exception is a bar token advertising Lemp beer, the product of the W. J. Lemp Brewing Company of St. Louis. The token is believed by collectors to have originated in Butte where Stromberg, Mullins Co. represented the brewery.
Meanwhile Jerry Mullins was having a personal life. In August 1893, at the age of 35, he married Katherine O’Neil, a woman of Irish heritage, born in Michigan and according to records was 17 when they wed. A year later their daughter, Mary Leona was born. She was their only child. By now prosperous, Mullins moved his family into a modest one story house at 510 West Galena Street in Butte. Then he set about remodeling it extensively. He added a one story extension and second story. Today the house is on the historic register for its curved glass parlor bay, original Victorian interior, including a double staircase, an ornate support pillar, maple floors, and original light fixtures. Mullins left his personal mark on the residence, carving his name in the granite doorstep and initials in the beveled glass above the door. Shown here, although the exterior facade has been changed, the house interior is much as Jerry and Kate left it.
Mullins took a strong interest in local and state politics, active in the Democratic party organization in Butte. He was elected from the Sixth Ward to a two year term on the City Council and followed with second term, named by his peers as Council President in City Hall, shown here. During this same period, he left Stromberg to open to his own saloon/liquor store and in 1904 joined with other Butte locals in starting a new brewery called the Tivoli Brewing Company. Mullins was secretary treasurer and his saloon described as the main distribution point for wholesale and retail beer customers.
While Mullins may have been growing ever more wealthy from his liquor and brewery revenues, the forces of prohibition were accelerating in Montana as well as throughout the Nation. Some brewers and beer distributors were employing a strategy that decried the evils of whiskey, allying themselves with the “Drys,” but insisting that beer was akin to “food” and should not be banned. Alarmed, leading voices in the liquor industry, recognizing that the argument was damaging the entire effort at staving off bans on alcohol, created an organization called the National Protective Association. It operated through a network of state units.
As an individual who was involved with both liquor and beer, Jerry Mullins was a natural choice to be chosen president of the Montana Protective Association. Traveling throughout the state advising on local issues, he became a widely recognized figure. Thus it was no surprise when Mullins was selected among 100 Montana residents to be chosen for a caricature in the 1911 book, “Cartoons and Caricatures of Prominent Men of Montana,” — the picture that opens this post. Mullins was the only “whiskey man” depicted.
In the end, Mullins efforts to beat back the forces of prohibition were futile. On December 31, 1918, a year before the imposition of National Prohibition, Montana went “dry.” Mullins was forced to close his saloon and witness the demise of the Tivoli Brewery after 14 years in operation. Earlier he had taken a financial setback as the president of a mining company headquartered in Butte, capitalized at $1.5 million in 1914 dollars. A mining journal reported the company owned the Ultamilla gold mine near Helena, Montana but was “in debt and idle.”
Whether it was these twin setbacks or other causes, Jerry and Kate moved to Seattle, Washington, the home of their now-married daughter. There Mullins health declined because of heart problems. In a weakened condition, he became a victim of a flu epidemic and died in January 15, 1923. He was 64 years old. On his death certificate his wife Kate gave his occupation as “hotel proprietor,” although I can find no record of his having been thus engaged. After a funeral Mass in Seattle’s St. James Cathedral, he was buried in Calvary Catholic Cemetery, below.
Over his lifetime Jerry Mullins, an immigrant’s son with limited schooling and a miner’s beginning, by dint of intelligence and effort in the alcoholic beverage trade had risen in business and political recognition to become one of Montana’s most prominent men.
Note: This post was assembled from a variety of reference materials. Principal was the book, A History of Montana, Volume 2, published in 1913. Page 1167.“Cartoons and Caricatures of Prominent Men of Montana,” was published in 1911 by J.C. Terry, artist and publisher.
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